More people emailed about health care, mostly because of Ted Kennedy dying, and what I think is that Ted Kennedy’s death will matter not one whit in the final accounting as to whether or not health care reform passes in the United States. The Republicans trying to kill reform may have liked Kennedy personally, but they weren’t willing to compromise with him when he was alive; dead Ted Kennedy will have about as much power over them as the Dead Kennedys do. (I am told Chuck Grassley is a secret fan of Jello Biafra, but personally do not believe it.)

No, what matters in the final accounting is how Democrats support health care reform. By this point, the antics of conservative Democrats have grown remarkable, and it’s only really the traditions of American politics that keep Ben Nelson in his party. Which of course begs the question:

Why don’t they just kick him out?

Or, at the very least, threaten to. Let’s be clear: in any Parliamentary-style system anywhere else in the world, an MP behaving as contra-party as Nelson has – with Kent Conrad and Mary Landrieu not far behind – would be turfed, and turfed quickly. Granted, American political parties aren’t quite as heirarchical or organized and a degree of freedom is expected – but all that is required of conservative Democrats, for the most part, is that they not filibuster health care reform. They can vote against it all they like (well, to the tune of nine votes).

That Nelson in particular is flirting with it should trigger those threats. Yes, if Ben Nelson gets kicked out of the Democratic party that is one less vote for any Democratic majority, to be sure. But when the majority is in the high fifties without him, Ben Nelson’s sole value to the Democratic agenda he opposes is that he not filibuster; his vote is effectively worthless.

The threat is not without value: in Nelson’s case, he loses his seniority on all his committees; Nelson is just coming into his own and in a term or two, as a Democrat, will likely chair a major committee. As a newly-minted Republican, that will likely not happen any time soon. This of course also assumes Nelson will survive re-election in 2012 as a Republican, and despite his personal popularity in his state that is not a given; the uncertainty of a potential primary and the loss of Democratic funding support can’t make things less shaky.

But what I like most about it is that it’s a move of strength. The Democratic push on health care reform has been cautious. Timid, even. If the Democratic leadership wants it – and they should – they need to show some balls, make it seem like they want it rather than just feel obligated. They need to tell their slackers where the door is, and how far they can go before it hits their ass on the way out. And “how far” should not be far at all.

The strength of the Democratic party has always been in its inclusivity. Black Democrats, white Democrats, straight Democrats, gay Democrats, young Democrats, old Democrats, northern Democrats, southern Democrats. Now we know how far that inclusivity goes, how deep that dedication to acceptance to the national community is:

They can’t kick Ben Nelson out any more than they tried kicking Joe Lieberman out in 2006. Well, at least the voters TRIED. Joe went back in as an ‘independent’, won with the help of the Republicans (much to the chagrin of the actual Republican candidate running that year), and was welcomed back by the Democratic leadership with open arms.

Expecting discipline from the modern Democratic Party is like expecting the Flying Dutchman to reach port. Ain’t gonna happen.

As Equinox pointed out, the ‘strength’ of the Democrats is that they are inclusive (progressive/populist) but without organizational discipline. The Republicans have the organizational discipline but not the inclusiveness, in fact they’re getting EXCLUSIVE by the day with only the mainstream media giving them any fawning attention. The Republican organizational skills also make them vulnerable to far-reaching scandals (The Abramoff bribery scandals are still ongoing, they just arrested another guy last week), whereas the Democrats’ current scandals are localized to individuals or state groups.

That and they care about fake numbers not the reality. In reality, they don’t have 60. Because they have Lieberman and the recently yet not really Democratic Arlen Specter, the appearance of strength seems more important to them.

The basic problem is that there is no point of ideology held by the entire Democratic Caucus. It’d be helpful to those of you from parliamentary countries to think of the Democratic Party not as a political party but as a fragile coalition government. If you’re in a three-major-party state like Canada or Britain, the Dems are basically an NDP/Grit coalition with several moderate Tory members.

Leading Democrats are terrified that if they make any real demand for party unity, the whole thing will fly apart. Yes, that might result in a revitalized Democratic Party growing from the rubble, but given that it also might give the Republicans control of the country for another decade at least, that rubble might not be quite so figurative as I would prefer.

Ben Nelson isn’t the only problem. Talking Points Memo has estimated that there are 13 senate Democrats opposed to the public option, either because they’re ‘Blue Dogs’ who have a new-found respect for deficits or because they’re outright stooges for the insurance industry. You can’t kick them all out.

American politics is simply broken. Too polarized to reach compromise, too crazy to seek moderation. The empire is due to fall any day now.

Given that they didn’t punish Lieberman for actually campaigning for McCain, and that they welcomed Specter into the party by letting him keep the seniority he had earned as a Republican, I think we can rest assured that Ben Nelson will face the harshest glare imaginable for no longer than 20 seconds as the sum total of his punishment.

And, since the current governor of Nebraska is a Republican, this also limits the options of getting a bunch of drunken Washington interns to beat him to death behind the Lincoln memorial (the true “nuclear” option to ensure party unity…)

Llelldorin is exactly right – the Democrats are only a political party in the US and are an artifact of our Electoral College and other structures that make a two-party system the preferred outcome over a multiparty system. In any country with a Parliamentary system the Democrats would not exist at all, except as a governing coalition that comes together after the Conservative Party governs the country into Epic Fail territory for a few years.

As such the Democrats can’t just threaten to jettison Nelson – he’s a key figure in one of the smaller coalition parties that make up the whole. You think Evan Bayh, Blanche Lincoln, Joe Lieberman and others would sit idly by while that kind of threat to their own status happens? Not terribly likely. What’s more, since Majority Leader Harry Reid is a freaking MEMBER of the “coalition party” that Nelson is also a member of, he would never threaten to do this in a bazillion years, as it would be the death knell of his Majority Leader status.

Joe Lieberman sided with the Republicans on issue after issue. And the Democrats in power lined up behind him again and again.

Then the voters of his state did what the party wouldn’t and kicked him out of the party by defeating him in the primary. And what did the Democrats in power do? They lined up behind him in the general.

Party affiliation isn’t really about where you stand on the issues. It’s about your vote on the organizing resolutions, that decide who’s in charge for the next two years.

Ted Kennedy’s death does matter if it comes down to a filibuster. The Senate still requires 60 votes to break one despite only having 99 members.

Also, kicking people out of the party is how the Democrats ended up with a 60-member caucus. Arlent Specter was a Republican less than a year ago. Strong primary challenges from the right also eliminated several moderate Republicans in liberal states.

Independent of the merits of making an example of Nelson specifically, I’m less than sure about the technical feasibility of a couple points in this post.

First of all… CAN the Democrats boot Nelson? I mean, is there actually a procedure in place for this that can be used? I’ve seen political figures called upon by their parties to resign from OFFICE and I’ve seen party members turn on each other (see: any Presidential primary in either party in the 1960s) but I can’t recall anyone being turfed. The President is usually thought of as the ‘leader’ of his party while in office… does that carry real power? Can the DNC do something? Can he be expelled from the Senate Caucus?

Second of all… does anyone really doubt that the Republicans, if the Democrats were to boot him, wouldn’t make an ENORMOUS show of gaurenteeing him all his seniority on all his commitees? So not a huge loss there for Nelson, except of course for being in the Minority.

I’m also… it may be that if an example is needed, Nelson may not be the guy to go to it for.

Traditionally the Democratic Party is real tolerant towards its members from red states; its sort of accepted that they’ll do what they need to do in order to get re-elected, and that even if the only Democratic vote they cast is for Majority Leader, its often better than having a Republican. Nelson in particular usually keeps a low profile. He’s far from a household name. He has not, as far as I know (and correct me if I am wrong) specifically held news conferences or massive events that are outright designed to trash his party and its agenda; rather he gets asked questions in the normal course of doing business as a Senator and answers with positions that 1) he feels are neccessarry vis-a-vis his electability in Nebraska, and 2) that he actually holds, being as how he IS, in fact, quite conservative.

I’m not sure turfing Nelson is a net gain. you’d go from a guy who SOMETIMES votes with you to a Republican who would NEVER vote with you. (And if he joined the Republicans Nelson would have to run far to the right to avoid being primaried.)

It seems like if an example needs to be made, you go after LIEBERMAN. Or another blue-state Senator who is fucking things up. Someone who lives in a state where ‘Republican’ is a dirty word and if they get nuked or switch parties in the next election they WILL be replaced with another Democrat for whom his predeccessor is a salutary example.

Basically, my longwinded opinion is that showing Nelson the door, while it would feel good, might not actually be a GAIN. I could be wrong. I’m wrong a lot.

I’m not sure there is a proceedure to kick someone out and if they tried it would almost certainly backfire.

The US does not have party-chosen candidate lists as in most parlimentary systems. Voters choose the party candidates in primaries and then the senator in an election. The way to remove a senator from a party is to beat him in the party primary.

I doubt voters would welcome the Democratic party taking that choice out of their hands.

I don’t think it’s possible to kick someone out of a party in the US. Party membership in the US is fully a matter of self-identification– if he says he’s a Democrat, then he is one, even if he votes against the party on everything.
Remember David Duke? Whenever he ran for office in Louisiana, Republicans from around the country campaigned for his opponents. The entire party leadership was against him, but they couldn’t prevent him from being a Republican candidate.

The problem with health care reform, is that nobody really wants to risk it. Health care is just too complex an issue with too many pitfalls to be worth the risk. There are too many ways to botch it and become unelectable.
The only ones who really work at it are those to whom it is a pet project issue, or if they are pandering to a particular constituency this time around. I suspect that even these hobbyists would back off if they really thought it had a decent chance of going through.
Come time to vote, people will be out of Washington and miss the vote, or find some clause they object to, or any number of other problems will come out of the woodwork. The democrats talk a good game and make a show of supporting Obama’s plan, but I really doubt it’s gonna happen.

As a native Nebraskan, I’m not quite sure that Nelson will be around in a few terms. I’m reasonably sure that he won for two reasons in 2006.

1. His opponent was Pete Ricketts, the son of the second richest man in Nebraska. (Doesn’t sound that impressive, but when the richest man is Warren Buffet…Well, he stands to inherit at least one billion) Worse yet, Pete Ricketts kept trying to present himself as a common joe. Fast forward a few years, and it turns out, hey, he’s buying the Chicago cubs!

2. Ricketts flooded the airwaves with attack ads. Worse yet, attack ads that were centered a bad jingle. Also, word of advice, Pete, if you want to attack your opponent of tax improprieties, you might want to make sure your taxes are impeccable.